His 1968 book “The Population Bomb” awoke the world to the ecological and social threats behind exploding human population. Since then, Paul Ehrlich and his wife Anne have published dozens of books, many of them pioneering in fields like biology, evolution, and social affairs.

His latest, with Anne, is “The Dominant Animal and the Fate of Biodiversity.”

I was privileged to hear and record Paul Ehrlich speaking to a packed house at the University of British Columbia. All around Paul, were priceless fossils and displays of now-extinct species – just part of the collection awaiting the opening of the new Beaty Museum at UBC, in Vancouver.

In this speech, Ehrlich is hardly the ivory tower academic. He ranges over the multiple threats now facing humanity and the world’s species, not to mention the commercial and political insanity now gripping his own country, the United States. A warrior academic, this week, on Radio Ecoshock.

You get the whole speech, as I heard it on September 24th, 2008, recorded at the University of British Columbia on September 24th, 2008. The evening celebrated the development of the new Beaty Museum in Vancouver, Canada.

If you are looking for the underlying causes of the global financial crisis, be sure to download the Radio Ecoshock program for October 3rd, called “The Prolonged Crash“.

Sign up for our weekly program podcast at ecoshock.org

My thanks to the Beaty Museum at UBC and Paul Ehrlich for permission to broadcast this speech.